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Sun and Microsoft announced two "milestones" this week in their ongoing alliance, including the official opening of a Sun/Microsoft Interoperability Center on Microsoft's Redmond, Washington campus.

The center is intended to optimize use of Microsoft applications with Sun Fire x64 servers and storage. Also, the companies are announcing availability of Sun Infrastructure Solution for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.

The center will provide a setting for hands-on testing and tuning of Sun/Microsoft solutions and help joint customers achieve performance results, Microsoft said. Customers can run key Microsoft applications on Sun x64 servers.

"Additionally, with the new Infrastructure Solution for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Sun's expertise in x64 servers, storage and 64-bit database architectures will enable customers to significantly reduce e-mail TCO and ease the transition to the new 64-bit product," said Lisa Sieker, Sun vice president of systems marketing, in a statement released by the companies.

The Exchange Server solution is intended to help customers better manage e-mail growth and realize benefits of Exchange Server 2007, the companies said. Pre-tested and end-to-end system and storage configurations allow customers to migrate to Exchange Server 2007 and save as much as 85 percent in rack space. Savings also would be achieved in power and cooling.

Other objectives of the center include promotion of interoperability in such areas as virtualization, Java, systems management and identity, and collaboration. The center will collaborate with authorized Sun Solution Centers.

The Sun/Microsoft center will certify Java Platform Enterprise Edition and Java Platform Standard Edition, including the Java Runtime Environment software for and with Microsoft operating environments and applications. Also, joint work will be done to enable cross-platform server virtualization, including Windows Hyper-V and Sun xVM software.

Cross-company collaboration also will be done to allow Sun Ray thin client software to provide a virtual desktop for Windows.

After years of disputes, Sun and Microsoft announced a broad-based collaboration agreement in 2004.

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